edge was sticking up. The foreman shifted a bit and the floorboard fell back into place.
The trader’s wallet was lying open on the table. The Prince took out the banknotes and rustled them.
The Prince took a step towards the horse-trader and smashed a fist into his cheekbone. The Kalmyk’s head bobbed about, but he didn’t shout out or start crying – he was a tough one.
‘I got the whole deck out for three hundred. It’s a flaming disgrace. Why, you squint-eyed snake!’
‘All right,’ said the Prince, tugging the watch out of the horsetrader’s pocket – it was gold, good stuff. ‘You can thank your Kalmyk god for keeping your fat purse safe. Let’s go, Deadeye.’
He was already on his way to the door when Senka stuck his head in and said, all modest like:
‘Uncle Prince, can I say something, please?’
‘What are you doing here?’ the Prince said with a scowl. ‘A scram?’
And Senka said: ‘Nah, no scram, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to check over there, under the floor, eh?’
And he pointed to the floorboard.
The horse-trader jerked on his chair and wheezed something Senka couldn’t understand – it must have been a curse in his own language. The Prince looked at Senka, then at the floor. He thumped the foreman in the ear – the blow hadn’t looked very hard, but the foreman tumbled over, taking his chair with him, and started snivelling.
The Prince bent down, hooked one finger under the edge of the floorboard and lifted it out – there was a hole in the floor underneath it. He put his hand in.
‘Ah-ha.’
He took out a big leather wallet, and it was stuffed chock-full with crunch.
The Prince counted the swag. ‘Why, there’s three thousand here!’ he said. ‘Good for you, Sixer.’
Senka was flattered, of course. He looked at Deadeye to see whether he was admiring him too.
But Deadeye wasn’t admiring Senka, and he wasn’t looking at the wallet. Something strange was happening to him. He’d stopped smiling, and his eyes weren’t gleaming now, they looked drowsy.
‘I believed them . . .’ Deadeye said slowly, and his whole face quivered, as if waves were running across it. ‘I believed the Judases. They looked me in the eye! And they lied! They lied – to me!’
‘Enough, enough, don’t go kicking up the dust,’ the Prince said –he was rather pleased with the find. ‘They have to mind their own interests
Deadeye started moving, muttering: ‘Goodbye, my darling Kalmyk girl. . . Your eyes are very narrow, true, your nose is flat, your forehead broad, you do not lisp in fluent French .. .’2 He chuckled: ‘Narrow, very narrow . . .’
Then suddenly he leapt forward – exactly the same way he had when he spiked Yoshka – and stuck his foil straight down into the foreman’s eye. Senka heard a crunch (that was the steel running through the skull and sticking in the floor) and he gasped and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Deadeye had already pulled the foil out and was watching curiously as something white, like cream cheese, dripped off the blade.
The foreman hammered his heels on the floor and opened his mouth wide, but no shout came out. Senka was afraid to look him in the face.
‘What the . . . Are you crazy?’ the Prince snarled.
Deadeye answered back in a hoarse, strained voice: ‘I’m not crazy. It just sickens me that there’s no truth in this world.’
He gave a flick of his wrist, there was a whistling sound, and the sharp point of the foil slit the horse-trader’s throat. A tuft of beard that was sliced off went flying through the air, then the blood came spurting out in a thick jet – like water out of a fire hose.
Senka gasped again, but this time he forgot to close his eyes. He saw the horse-trader jerk up off the chair so hard that the ropes holding his hands broke. He jumped up, but he couldn’t walk, his legs were still tied to the chair.
The life was gushing out of the horse trader in spurts of cherry red, and he kept trying to hold it back with his hands, to stuff it back in, but it was no good – the blood flowed through his fingers, the Kalmyk’s face went blank and it was so terrifying that Senka screamed and went dashing out of that hideous room.
HOW SENKA SAT IN THE
PRIVY CUPBOARD
He began to recover his wits only on Arbat Street, when he was completely